Befuddled
by yorickjones
Summary: An Esquire investigative article into the mysterious breakdown of a highly public figure eccentric millionaire Elmer J. Fudd.


**Befuddled**

Had you met this man just one year ago today, the surround­ings would have been quite different. All necessary arrangements would have been made through a personal secretary and household staff. A limo would have been sent and one would have spent the leisurely drive upstate composing one's notes and biographical tid­bits, preparing for an afternoon with one of the Forbes 400's most eccentric moguls. What the man might do or say – then as now – would be completely unpredictable. In fact, the only surety in the entire interview would be the introduction; a quick pump of a handshake followed by the man's near-infamous mantra: "I'm Elmer J. Fudd, millionaire, I own a mansion and a yacht."

Things have changed, however. As anyone who reads the newspapers knows, the Hamptons estate is gone, the _Brunnhilde_, his eighty-foot yacht, sits in dry dock, the controlling chair of the multi­billion dollar conglomerate known as ACME, Inc. has passed to a succession of vice-presidents, and the founder himself – still one of the wealthiest men in America today – has a new address: the Jones-Avery Spa for Psychiatric Well-Being, in the foothills just north of Burbank, California.

It may be called a "spa," but it becomes readily apparent, once passing through its high-gated security checkpoint, just what kind of a place this is. A summer camp for rich lunatics. Don't be over-hasty to read derision into this reporter's initial impression of the Jones-Avery Spa; indeed, it is my firm, personal belief that the upper-class are just as deserving of mental health as the bourgeoisie. And if they can afford imported tapioca and a higher quality of butterfly net, then bully for them. But this place, with its manicured grounds, swimming pools and tennis courts is the polar opposite of the iron-barred Gothic asylum one might expect. No _Snake Pit_ this. Here, in a country-club milieu, is where Fudd is now – according to the spa's press release – _"enjoying a calming, ordered life of supervised indoor and outdoor activities while benefiting from the finest in 'round-the-clock coun­seling and pharmaceutical treatment."_ Which allows one to rest assured that the man's days are filled with all the basket weaving and lithium his money can subsidize.

Really, the place is lovely. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, very protective of its privileged charges.

Although clearances had been arranged through every appro­priate channel and the interview date and time rigidly set some two months in advance, I was met at the gate by two cheerfully gargan­tuan "helpers" (Bob, a rather stony gent, and his better half Tex, he of the charming grin) who had been asked to escort me directly to the waiting room of Dr. Freleng while a final decision was being made regarding my "access" to Mr. Fudd.

And so it came to pass that this reporter's search into the truth behind the dramatic disintegration of one of the business world's finest minds was effectively couched in a stylishly modern anteroom full of comfortable furniture and soft, muted colors. The entire philoso­phy of the Jones-Avery Spa rings out through its oppressive color choice: better living through pastels. Though none of the walls are barren stretches of white, khaki green or gray and though carpets replace the expected polished tile floors, there still hangs about the place the pervasive, antiseptic stink of "hospital." Within mere minutes my eyes had glazed over, as serenely unseeing as any successful lobotomy case. Given plenty of time by the good doctor's last-minute bureaucratic shuffling, I was obliged to reflect on the person that I had flown cross-country to find, the man who, until one late afternoon last fall, we all thought we knew.

Elmer J. Fudd has been called crazy long before it became a clinical diagnosis. Who in their right mind would have, in a postwar economy, emptied their trust funds into a sickly firm that manu­factured commercial-grade explosives? Who, barring serious cranial injury, would then go on an orgy of acquisition, sucking up seemingly random failing concerns running the gamut from concrete to house­hold appliances to engineering firms – even an _anvil factory_? What kind of a man would oversee such a patchwork quilt of businesses and, with skill and obvious pride, unite them all under the umbrella of ACME, Inc.? The kind of a man who would not rest until this country full of ex-GIs and their brand new families woke up in their ACME tract homes, stepped into slippers soled with ACME rubber, and helped themselves to coffee from their ACME coffee makers. The company's name became ubiquitous, the products became inescap­able, and the man behind it all became extremely wealthy.

Though he had become a millionaire in a remarkably short period of time, though he had become hero to a new generation of entrepreneurs, he was, according to those who had met Fudd in the flesh, a man almost impossible to take seriously. This stunted, pudgy little fellow with the bulbous, bald head of a grotesquely overgrown infant; the human caricature equipped with an equally unfortunate voice, a machine-gun chortle accompanying a "vewwy, vewwy sewious" speech impediment. But few could argue the unquestion­able influence this buffoonish figure wielded over the growth of this country's industrial sector in the last two decades. When his book, _Stalking Success: A Field-Guide To Endangered Acquisitions_, was pub­lished in '53 it threw the rather staid world of corporate barons and mom-and-pop entrepreneurs on its ear. It introduced ideas that were deemed coarse and venal and just, well, un-gentlemanly into an arena where lines had been very clearly drawn for a very long time. With thematically composed chapter headings like _Survival Of The Most Heavily Armed, Be Very Quiet, _and _Profit Season,_ and graced with a cover photo of Fudd himself in full huntsman's regalia, _Stalking Success_ announced to anyone with ears to hear that a new predator had entered the forest and no stock holder, market analyst, or CEO was safe. Ignored upon first release, the book slowly grew from object of ridicule to guilty pleasure to intriguing must-have to bible, changing the mindset of an entire field and making its author another million – just another drop in the bucket to the goofily grinning bald gent in the over-sized hunter's cap.

As we grew to know about Mr. Elmer J. Fudd, the game-hunter motif was not just an appropriately chosen visual metaphor for his business philosophy, but truly one of the man's passions. Like many a multimillionaire with too much time and money on his hands, Fudd took up an extravagant pastime. Where Hearst was fond of buying out castles and Hughes set flying records, Fudd took to the grasslands of Kenya and the tundra of Alaska, always armed and always on the lookout for souvenirs of the formerly breathing kind. The expected lions, tigers and bears stood lifeless and stuffed along the darkly shiny mahogany hallways of his mansion, yet Fudd, never a very discriminate killer, enthusiastically acquainted them with the likes of Tasmanian devils from Down Under, coyotes and road runners from the deserts of the Southwest, and even a rare black mallard from the pond just outside his back door. An able if not dis­tinguished hunter, Fudd collected his share of trophies – enough, in the final tally, to persuade one to never underestimate the comical little man and take full, straight-faced, stock of his life philosophy as outlined in his preface to _Stalking Success_:

_"While the importance of stealth cannot be overstressed, the true key to the hunt, fellow sportsmen, is _focus._ Without focus there is no aim and without aim there is no chance of hitting your target. To zero in on your goal, you must eliminate all barriers between yourself and your intended quarry, indeed, you must do more than 'understand' your prey, you must _be_ your prey. When all sense of self has been discarded and your entire being is as one with the target in your sights, only then can the trigger be pulled. No matter your goal – corporate merger or three-point buck – you are always, in essence, hunting _yourself._"_

These words with their resonant, decidedly Eastern bent, only add to the confusing stew of Fudd's personality, and these were the words I was studying when the door across from me opened and I was motioned inside. The doctor would see me now.

Dr. Ub Freleng is a swell fella. His smile is toothily reassuring and his handshake is warm and pink. I was invited to sit in an outra­geously comfy chair across from his desk in an office that, like the institution surrounding it, tries with all its might to be "homey." Sunlight filters in through delicately patterned curtains and gleams off the polished lemon-wood floors. Instead of the expected degrees, citations and framed ink-blots, Freleng's walls are festooned with patients' watercolors – even the charming hook rug just inside the door is, I am later to discover, the handiwork of a certain diminutive ganglord who has resided here since the syphilis finally got to his head in the mid-'50s. Nice to know there was a sensitive side to him all along.

Dr. Freleng is a multi-degreed, widely read mental health-care professional with perfect gray wisps of hair flying away from his temples, a satisfying picture of the kindly, aged genius. He looks me in the eye as his adorable crows feet crinkle and, leaning across a desk decorated with pictures of his own black-and-white tabby and cute yellow canary, manages to sweeten the rather blunt pronouncement_, "I'm afraid Mr. Fudd will be unable to meet with you today."_

Imagine this reporter's surprise.

**_Dr. Freleng_:** "The hospital board and I are concerned with the level of progress he is exhibiting and we feel his therapy might be compro­mised by someone from the outside forcing him into a state of self-examination."

**ESQUIRE: **"So, essentially what you're saying here is that he's even more nuts than we've been led to believe?"

**_Dr. Freleng:_** "We're not exactly comfortable with that term here."

**ESQUIRE:** "Well, are you comfortable discussing his case?"

**_Dr. Freleng:_** "I believe the facts that lead to Mr. Fudd's stay with us were reported thoroughly enough at the time."

**ESQUIRE:** "Assume they weren't. Why not treat the public to _your_ version of the story, doctor, replete with the insights you've gained into Fudd's condition."

**_Dr. Freleng:_** "It may seem like an evasion, but I'm afraid I must plead 'doctor-patient confidentiality'-"

**ESQUIRE:** "Come on, Dr. Freleng, there's a need to know out there how a man perceived in most quarters as a genius can suddenly snap, dynamite his own estate, and end up getting carted off in wrap­around sleeves."

**_Dr. Freleng:_** "You're baiting me."

**ESQUIRE:** "Quite possibly."

**_Dr. Freleng:_** "Look, Mr. Fudd has been diagnosed a clinical schizo­phrenic with little or no grasp of his surroundings, the events that brought him here, or even his own identity, _at present_. We, as his caretakers, are solely responsible for his treatment and must protect him from a reality that he's not healthy enough to participate in – again - at present."

**ESQUIRE:** "Really? That's quite a rosy outlook. Do a lot of crazy millionaires get cured of thinking they're rabbits?"

**_Dr. Freleng:_** "I think that will conclude our interview."

I hadn't planned on leaving so soon, but I knew I had thrown the head shrinker a curveball. He signaled the end of our meeting by stepping out from behind his desk, placing one hand on my arm and presenting the door with the other, still smiling like a Presbyterian minister on Sunday morning.

There was no point in goading this well-paid professional any further; even if I had proffered the eyewitness testimonials I had gathered from Fudd's household staff, I was sure to receive no sub­stantiation from Freleng. Did I need any? The Doctor's reaction, to this reporter's eyes, spoke volumes.

According to the stack of corroborative reports I had received, Fudd's small eccentricities finally blossomed in full in the spring of '59. The colorful quirks of his personality took on increasingly embar­rassing parameters as the president and acting CEO of ACME, Inc. appeared at a shareholders meeting in full Wagnerian armor delivering his address and answering all questions in ludicrous operatic recitative. Originally chalked up to the millionaire's prankish nature, this stunt led those closest to him to suggest he leave the "dreary, day-to-day" running of the conglomerate to others while he took a "rest." To the surprise of most, he did, though he chose to remain at home, spending his days stalking the woods of his own sprawling estate for his fill of small game. He kept the chef and the taxidermist busy for months before a near miss in which the trophy-crazed sportsman took a poorly aimed potshot at one of his grounds­keepers whom, he claimed, he had mistaken for a pig in a blazer and bowtie. It was shortly after this incident that Fudd's behavior assumed a dangerous edge. This was around the time that Elmer J. Fudd, millionaire, started sleeping with his shotgun.

Concern quickly filtered through those that worked under him as butlers, chauffeurs and maids – in short, the people who pampered Fudd before Dr. Freleng and associates took over. They feared not only for his safety, but (understandably) their own. Thus the decision was made to replace all the live ammunition in the house with blanks. A clever solution on the face of it but, in the rapidly disintegrating mind of Elmer Fudd, an unfortunate misstep.

The next day's hunt should have offered no surprises. With his beloved 1918 FE grade, .20-gauge, double-barreled A.H. Fox shot­gun in hand, Fudd crept silently through the woods following the faint tracks of one of Nature's most beguiling creatures – the wild rabbit. Like a million times before, Fudd spied upon a living being in its habitat and framed it in his sights. Like a million times before his finger tightened on the trigger. BANG!

But this one time in a million, the little gray hare merely bolted into the underbrush, startled, but still breathing.

Fudd's immediate assumption was simply that he had missed, but, five minutes later, after tracking that selfsame rabbit to its warren and unloading both barrels at its fluffy white tail – to the exact same (non)effect – something dark flipped a switch in Fudd's head.

Over the next three weeks, Elmer's entire being was devoted to one cause and one cause only: find and destroy that rabbit. The brain that had once mapped out new territory for would-be tycoons was now morbidly, unswervingly bound in an Ahab's quest for the little gray bunny. _Focus_, he had said, was the key. Now it was all he had – a sick, distorted focus on the blood and fur of one small animal that seemed to be taunting him with its speed and apparent invulner­ability to the arsenal at Fudd's command. Day after day the hunter found the rabbit and let his guns roar, but night after night he retired to his bed – hunting cap still clamped on his light-bulb noggin – muttering a new mantra in his own unique voice: _"Kill the wabbit."_

Since Fudd hunted alone, his household staff could not guess at the deepening dementia into which he was slipping, a fantasy they might have been able to stem with an explanation of the ammo switcheroo. Instead, they could only watch as days passed and their employer carried increasingly serious ordinance into his woods – high-powered rifles and submachine guns – mumbling to himself all the while.

And still the rabbit lived and ran and mocked him with every successive breath.

According to the testimonial of his personal valet, a Mr. Enrique "Speedy" Gonzales, Fudd now began rambling disjointedly about the rabbit and its supposed mystical powers. It seems this "immortal" denizen of the forest had been mytholigized in Elmer Fudd's psyche until it represented to him the teasing, capricious forces of Fate itself. In Gonzales's account, _"Mr. Fudd, he would say strange things to me. Talking about nature spirits and the Indians, how they worshipped what they call the 'Trickster.' Some kind of a mischievous god in the shape of a rabbit. It didn't make sense to me, and when he would talk this way his eyes would stare so big and his nose would twitch. Very sad what happened."_

And what happened (revealed here in full and at last) was _this_:

Pressed beyond sanity by his repeatedly frustrated attempts at lepus-icide, Fudd waited until the Labor Day weekend. While his staff was dismissed and probably amusing their relatives with stories of their crazy boss over holiday barbecues, Elmer was unloading the mysterious ACME truck that had appeared at his gates the previous afternoon. The cargo? More than a ton of commercial grade explo­sives. There was no one around to see whether or not Fudd's nose was twitching as he traipsed about his grounds shoving dynamite bundles and blasting caps, all proudly bearing the ACME name, into every rabbit hole and gopher hole, under every shrub and briar patch, unraveling miles of contact wire behind him like a lunatic spider. By 11:30, Sunday morning, this vast network of destruction was con­nected to one detonator. With his pudgy child's hands sweatily gripping the plunger, Elmer J. Fudd must have seen visions beyond any surrealist's nightmares ringing through his mind to the accompa­niment of a host of fat ladies in metal breastplates and horned helmets, a cartoon version of _Die Gotterdammerung_ in which his was the power to topple gods and assume their thrones. If this animal, this rabbit that laughed, was a deity of madness, then Fudd would destroy this thing to become this thing, finishing the trade with one final act of fire and apocalypse. The plunger went down...

This is where you came in.

Even if you never physically felt the blast that left a crater roughly sixty acres square, effectively demolishing one of upstate New York's most beautiful estates, you were still no doubt aware of the aftershocks. The Market staggered and many of Wall Street's finest were stunned to see how one man's breakdown could have caused such a stir. Across this country and overseas, many an ACME employee said a silent prayer for the solidity of their jobs. And somewhere behind the furor, once the dust had settled, the Jones-Avery Spa for Psychiatric Well-Being received a new resident.

I had flown to this coast on wings of curiosity along a flight path of rumor and now it appeared I was to be denied my destina­tion. Please understand, dead ends and cold trails are part of the journalism game and I am an old hand at rolling with the punches, but there was no way I was leaving without a shot at the man himself. Upon exiting Dr. Freleng's office, this enterprising reporter ducked into a convenient washroom off the main corridor and cracked the door. Not more than five minutes later I was rewarded with a quick glance of Freleng stepping lively down the hall and out of the building. Giving it a dozen seconds more, I followed.

Putting the more questionable skills allotted a member of our noble fourth estate to good use, I stalked the good doctor across the uniformly healthy lawns of the Jones-Avery Spa, maintaining a safe distance and keeping a paranoid eye peeled for his two simian aides. We made our way towards a pleasant matchbox bungalow caressed by fingers of ivy, a quaint little vegetable garden on the side. As Freleng took to the steps, I picked up my pace, practically jogging at his heels. I had a hunch. Unfortunately this last burst of conspicuous motion succeeded in giving me away to one of the aforementioned nut ranchers – ironically it was my favorite of the duo – and he promptly broke off his flirtations with one of the staff nurses to charge after me with locomotive seriousness. Bad timing. Freleng, now unpleasantly aware of my presence, had already committed to opening the bungalow's door and was reflexively attempting to block my line of sight by filling the gap with his white-coated frame. But I saw all I needed to see.

Brusquely held in the vice-like grip of my old buddy Tex, I had a brief but tantalizing glimpse of my prey in his new habitat. There, in a featureless room reeking of rotten vegetables, was a little man dressed big head to toe in a soiled bunny costume, complete with floppy ears and a cottonball tail, gripping a carrot which, when finished, would doubtless join the mounds of mouldering carrot stems that formed the floor of the place. Fudd acknowledged his doctor's arrival with an animal jerk of the head and (dare I say?) an adorable twitch of his nose. Though I was being turned aside by a pair of steely arms, I managed one last over-the-shoulder mental photograph of Fudd on his haunches perching atop one of those composte heaps, serenely chomping on his carrot and eyeing the psychiatrist cooly. _"What's up, Doc?"_ was all I heard the man say. The door was shut.

This may be the last we ever hear of an individual who affected all of our lives in many ways, direct and indirect. The empire survives even in the emperor's indeterminate absense. We still buy the products and we still recognize the name, but it stands as pre­mature memorial to a man still alive. Someday, perhaps years from today, we will hear, quietly, of the death of a once-giant figure (stature notwithstanding) but as I discovered, he's been gone for some time now. It may be that the great men among us, the powerful and the pioneers, truly do wrestle hand-to-hand with the gods, unlike the petty slap-and-run skirmishes we, the common folk, engage in from the safety of our smaller lives. If this is true, then our great men leave these battles scarred. Does their very reach drive them mad? Or is it madness that drives them to reach?

I never found Elmer J. Fudd, millionaire, I leave with no trophy, and the tracks that lead to the truth become more obscured with each passing year. In the end all that remains of the Trickster's last, best joke is irony and carrot stems. That's all, folks.


End file.
